AN MSP has rung alarm bells about developers behind plans for a £2 billion AI data centre being given “privileged access to decision-makers because they are a Duke”.
Laura Moodie, a Green MSP for the South Scotland region, spoke out after The National revealed that Duke of Roxburghe Charles Innes-Ker, one of Scotland’s wealthiest landowners, had been given a chance to privately lobby Scottish Borders councillors for the proposed data centre on his estate outside Duns.
Emails leaked to The National showed David Robertson, the chief executive of Borders Council, had invited the Duke to hold a meeting on August 13 and encouraged all councillors to attend – including those on the planning committee who will ultimately decide whether it can go ahead.
The leaked emails further showed that Robertson had taken legal advice from the council’s director of corporate governance to confirm that planning committee councillors were free to attend, and asked for other meetings to be moved to “accommodate” the Duke.
A petition opposing the plans to “introduce a major industrial development into a Special Landscape Area (SLA)” has been signed by more than 22,000 people, with concerns including the impact on wildlife, energy demand, infrastructure, light pollution, noise, and long-term environmental consequences.
Robertson told councillors that the meeting he had arranged for the Duke would be a chance to “correct some of the misinformation circulating online”.
Previously, a source told The National: “Locals have got to be asking questions over the ability of the council to reflect the views of the communities they're supposed to represent when they're giving a wealthy landowner this sort of privileged access to elected members while the chief executive dismisses the concerns of local residents as 'misinformation'.”
Kathleen White, a spokesperson for the Save the Lammermuirs – Stop the Data Centre campaign, added: “The Duke of Roxburghe appears to be using his status and connections to lobby the local authority’s decision-makers and to attempt to discredit the campaign. By going to some lengths to offer him a ‘briefing slot’, the chief executive is tacitly supporting the Duke’s view. This is clearly outrageous and undemocratic.”
Now, Green MSP Moodie has also spoken out, saying the lobby meeting arranged for the Duke is “obviously deeply concerning”.
“When I visited the site last week and met with local community campaigners from Save The Lammermuirs, they told me they had huge difficulty getting councillors to meet with them,” Moodie said.
“No developer should be given privileged access to decision-makers because they are a duke, or because of their wealth and landholdings, particularly when thousands of local people, like the ones I have met, have raised serious objections to the proposal."
“Scotland urgently needs a transparent national strategy, mandatory environmental impact assessments and a planning process in which local people have confidence, not a corporate free-for-all in which dukes are ushered to the front of the queue," she added.
Robertson and the Duke of Roxburghe’s estate have denied any wrongdoing.
In a statement released to The National, Robertson said: “I have been accused of bias in this matter, something I completely refute. I am not a decision maker on the proposed development and have not sought in any way to influence the views of elected members who are. My own personal views on the merits or otherwise of data centres are therefore irrelevant.”
He added: “The approach to briefing councillors is consistent with that taken previously in regard to other major developments in the Scottish Borders.”
Jaap Roell, Roxburghe Estates managing director and chief executive of the Sunlaws Development Company, said: “We emphatically reject the suggestion that an information gathering meeting – arranged by Scottish Borders Council – is in any way inappropriate.
“It is entirely above board and will be a matter of record and is no different to the approach that SBC takes when dealing with major development proposals.”
He added: “So much of the criticism of this project has been based on inaccurate information. It is sensible that councillors are presented with the full facts long before any decision is made.
“No planning application has yet been submitted, and no decisions are being sought from this meeting. Any future application will be considered through the statutory planning process.”
Innes-Ker is the 11th Duke of Roxburghe, a position created in 1707. He owns the Floors Castle estate outside Kelso.
The planned development on the Roxburghe Estate comprises of three large two-storey data centre buildings (up to a total ground footprint of 8.1ha), with associated infrastructure (grid connection, transformer, switchboard and Uninterruptible Power Supply system), staff/visitor parking, internal access roads and walkways, security fence and landscaping.
Each two-storey building is proposed to have a height up to 24m and an internal floor space of 54,000m2 over two storeys.
